In a scenario that has caused widespread outrage, citizens across Hawaii received a startling message on their phones from the Emergency Alert System (EAS) that told them that a ballistic missile was incoming and to seek immediate shelter.

That’s right, all across Hawaii residents believed that they were under attack, presumably from North Korea, with the apparent false alarm not being fixed for upwards of 37 minutes for any resident who wasn’t spending the morning on Twitter.

“The emergency alert claiming a ballistic missile attack was inbound was sent at 8:08AM. It took until 8:45AM to state it was a false alarm. 37 minutes where anyone in Hawaii who doesn’t sit on Twitter dot com all day thought their island might be incinerated. Fire people. Fix it,” noted Twitter user Jerry Dunleavy.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters later implied the false warning stemmed from a state, rather than federal, mishap. “The President has been briefed on the state of Hawaii’s emergency management exercise. This was purely a state exercise,” he said in a statement

“Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesman Richard Repoza said it was a false alarm and the agency is trying to determine what happened.,” the AP reports.

The message, initially thought authentic, spread quickly on social media, prompting some panic, as Fox News reported Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) estimated over one million Hawaiians received the erroneous alert. The EAS protocol should only be available to government officials.

Interestingly, the location of the false alarm was also particularly worrying when you consider the public threats from North Korea which now, “possesses ballistic missiles reportedly capable of reaching the Aloha State.”

To recap, over a million people in Hawaii were given a warning that claimed that they were about to be hit by a ballistic missile. One has to wonder how on earth this could possibly happen and whether or not there was actually a missile threat that is now being covered up?